When my daughter graduated from college about 10 years ago, Amanpour was the commencement speaker. Her address was one long political rant – very inappropriate for the occasion. It was the only sour note in an otherwise wonderful day. Since then I’ve had no respect for her.

I was expecting Barack to show off some of his French – alas, he chose rather to act French. As for Christiana Amanpour, she’s a harlot who is still trying to find a way to pass off the tawdry prostitution she anoints as journalism. Here in America you can say and write just about anything you want – but it’s still smart to wear an intellectual prophylactic around anything with Amanpour’s name on it…

Re. scum: What would Anampour call the street gangs who terrorize and rape girls who are not wearing a headscarf? What would she call those “youths” who attack ambulance personel responding to medical emergencies? What would she call someone who set her own car on fire just for the hell of it? I bet she doesn’t live in a no-go area.

A pity left wing journalists can never bring themselves to tell the ‘whole story, i.e. the truth about the ‘scum’ incident (it doesn’t make Sarkozy look bad enough) Sarkozy was not calling all the rioters in that poor suburb scum, he was specifically referring to those involved in a shootout that had killed a 6 or 10 year old boy (don’t remember his exact age, but he was not more than 10) And his comment was in answer to a woman leaning out of the window of a nearby tenament house begging him to get ‘those thugs’ (those responsible for the boys death – the same people who were making the lives of all who live in that suburb miserable, deadly.

Shane-I haven’t been able to find any reference that Sen. Obama does indeed speak Franch. Occidental College requires two years and proficiency(?) for a Bachelor’s in Political Science but he left before he had to fulfill those classes and Coumbia doesn’t have any language requirement, except for admission, for Political Science. In his first book Obama mentions needing a translator when he visited his father’s family to translate for him.

The other thing I was surprised to discover was that Sen. Obama was not recruited for the more famous and rigorous School of International and Public Affairs Masters Program which requires tested proficiency not just a completed class and passing grade. He then went to Harvard which also has no foreign language requirement for a Law Degree. I see a trend and I suspect that the plan is for everybody else to learn a language while the senator just keeps coming up with all those wonderful ideas for everybody else.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for Ms Amanpour – she is one of the finest journalists at CNN. I think her comments were perhaps misunderstood. She did not call France’s President a racist, but she pointed to France’s poor record of treating its black minorities and the provocative language of Mr Sarkozy against the rioters without recognizing the legitimate greviences of the rioters who had been discriminated against severely by French society. There is certainly a discrepancy between French society’s exclusion of black and Arabs on one hand and its adulation for Mr Obama.